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Walls, Shetland
Walls, known locally as Waas (Old Norse: ''Vagar'' = "Sheltered Bays" (voes) - the Ordnance Survey added the "ll" as they thought it was a corruption of "walls". Cf Vágar and Vágur in the Faroe Islands), is a settlement on the south side of West Mainland, Shetland Islands in Scotland. The settlement is at the head of Vaila Sound and sheltered even from southerly storms by the islands of Linga and Vaila. Walls is within the parish of Walls and Sandness. History One of its old names is "Vagaland", hence the name of the local poet. A pier was built at Walls in the 18th century, and from 1838, it was a center for fish curing. Walls itself is a quieter place than once it was. The large houses of Bayhall, now converted into flats, and Voe House are signs of past wealth, as are the three churches visible around the head of the sound. Two are still in use, while the third bears a sign showing its later conversion to a bakery. Waas was the childhood home of two fine poets, Vagaland a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orkney And Shetland (UK Parliament Constituency)
Orkney and Shetland is a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elects one Member of Parliament (MP) by the first past the post system of election. In the Scottish Parliament, Orkney and Shetland are separate constituencies. The constituency was historically known as Orkney and Zetland (an alternative name for Shetland). In the 2014 Scottish independence referendum A independence referendum, referendum on Scottish independence from the United Kingdom was held in Scotland on 18 September 2014. The referendum question was, "Should Scotland be an independent country?", which voters answered with "Yes" ..., 65.4% of the constituency's electors voted for Scotland to stay part of the United Kingdom. Creation The British parliamentary constituency was created in 1708 following the Acts of Union, 1707 and replaced the former Parliament of Scotland shire constituency of Orkney and Zetland (Parliament of Scotland constituency), Orkne ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scotland
Scotland (, ) is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a border with England to the southeast and is otherwise surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, the North Sea to the northeast and east, and the Irish Sea to the south. It also contains more than 790 islands, principally in the archipelagos of the Hebrides and the Northern Isles. Most of the population, including the capital Edinburgh, is concentrated in the Central Belt—the plain between the Scottish Highlands and the Southern Uplands—in the Scottish Lowlands. Scotland is divided into 32 administrative subdivisions or local authorities, known as council areas. Glasgow City is the largest council area in terms of population, with Highland being the largest in terms of area. Limited self-governing power, covering matters such as education, social services and roads and transportation, is devolved from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Foula
Foula (; sco, also Foola; nrn, Fuglø), located in the Shetland archipelago of Scotland, is one of the United Kingdom’s most remote permanently inhabited islands. Owned since the turn of the 20th century by the Holbourn family, the island was the location for the film '' The Edge of the World'' (1937). The liner RMS ''Oceanic'' was wrecked on the nearby Shaalds of Foula in 1914. Toponym The name "Foula" derives from Old Norse ''Fugley'', "bird island": compare the Faroese name of the island of Fugloy, "bird island", and Scottish Gaelic ''Fughlaigh''. Geography Foula lies in the Atlantic Ocean, west of Walls in Shetland. It was part of Walls civil parish. The island is about , with a low-lying coastal strip along the east side. With an area of , it is the seventh largest and most westerly of the Shetland Islands. It rises from low broken cliffs in the east to precipitous cliffs in the west. The island has five peaks, rising to at the Sneug and at the Kame. At the nort ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shetland Fiddlers' Society
The Shetland Fiddlers' Society is a group of fiddlers from Shetland that play regularly for Shetland Folk Dance and perform at events such as Shetland's Folk Festival and Accordion and Fiddle Festival. The society had its origin in May 1960, when the first big post-war social event organized in Shetland took place. Known as the Hamefarin, it was an organized return trip to their native isles made by some 150 Shetlanders who had emigrated and settled worldwide in such countries as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the USA. A week of social events of all kinds was laid on for the visitors at venues throughout the islands, and among the main attractions were a Grand Variety Concert and a Shetland Concert, each staged on two evenings in the Garrison Theatre, Lerwick. The opening act of each concert was a performance by forty 'massed fiddlers', players from all over the Shetland mainland gathered together by Tom Anderson and trained by him over the preceding winter months. The group ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Fraser (1884-1966)
Peter Fraser (; 28 August 1884 – 12 December 1950) was a New Zealand politician who served as the 24th prime minister of New Zealand from 27 March 1940 until 13 December 1949. Considered a major figure in the history of the New Zealand Labour Party, he was in office longer than any other Labour prime minister, and is to date New Zealand's fourth- longest-serving head of government. Born and raised in the Scottish Highlands, Fraser left education early in order to support his family. While working in London in 1908, Fraser joined the Independent Labour Party, but unemployment led him to emigrate to New Zealand in 1910. On arrival in Auckland, he gained employment as a wharfie and became involved in union politics upon joining the New Zealand Socialist Party. In 1916, Fraser was involved in the foundation of the unified Labour Party. He spent one year in jail for sedition after speaking out against conscription during the First World War. In 1918, Fraser won a Wellington ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christine De Luca
Christine De Luca (born 4 April 1947) is a Scottish poet and writer from Shetland, who writes in both English and Shetland dialect. Her poetry has been translated into many languages. She was appointed Edinburgh's Makar, or poet laureate from 2014 to 2017. De Luca is a global advocate for the Shetland dialect and literature of the Northern Isles of Scotland. Early life and education De Luca was born Christine Pearson in Walls, Shetland. Her father, Sandy Pearson, was the headmaster of Happyhansel Junior Secondary School in Shetland. De Luca moved to Edinburgh in her late teens to study at University of Edinburgh. After graduation, she taught high school for several years and later obtained a Masters in Educational Research in 1980. Writing career De Luca's first three poetry collections were published by the Shetland Library. Her first collection, ''Voes and Sounds'' was published in 1994 and her second work, ''Wast Wi Da Valkyries'', was published in 1997. Both collections won ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vagaland
Vagaland (6 March 1909 – 30 December 1973), was a Scottish poet from Shetland. Biography Born Thomas Alexander Robertson at Westerwick at the southern tip of the parish of Sandsting, his mother's home. He was the second son of Andrina Johnston and Thomas Robertson of Skeld, a merchant seaman. His father drowned before his first birthday, and his mother moved with her two sons to Stove in Waas. He grew up in hardship though his love for the land and the people overcame that. It was the old Norse name for the area that he adopted as his pen name. A shy boy who adjusted with difficulty to the rough and tumble of school, he was nonetheless able both at physical and intellectual pursuits, and in time he excelled. He took his MA at the University of Edinburgh and was offered the possibility of postgraduate work at Oxford, which he turned down for financial reasons, instead becoming a teacher at the Lerwick Central School and carer to his ailing mother. In 1953, he married Marth ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gazetteer For Scotland
The ''Gazetteer for Scotland'' is a gazetteer covering the geography, history and people of Scotland. It was conceived in 1995 by Bruce Gittings of the University of Edinburgh and David Munro of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society, and contains 25,870 entries as of July 2019. It claims to be "the largest dedicated Scottish resource created for the web". The Gazetteer for Scotland provides a carefully researched and editorially validated resource widely used by students, researchers, tourists and family historians with interests in Scotland. Following on from a strong Scottish tradition of geographical publishing, the ''Gazetteer for Scotland'' is the first comprehensive gazetteer to be produced for the country since Francis Groome's '' Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland'' (1882-6) (the text of which is incorporated into relevant entries). The aim is not to produce a travel guide, of which there are many, but to write a substantive and thoroughly edited description of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vaila
Vaila (Old Norse: "Valey") is an island in Shetland, Scotland, lying south of the Westland peninsula of the Shetland Mainland. It has an area of , and is at its highest point.Haswell-Smith, Hamish. (2004) The Scottish Islands. Edinburgh. Canongate. Vaila is home to an organic sheep farm and is also known for its mountain hares. In 2022, the island was put up for sale at £1.75 million History The island has been inhabited for thousands of years, and Neolithic and Bronze Age remains have been found there. Other remains on the island include Mucklaberry Castle tower, which was restored in the 1890s. In 1490, the Ciske family's estates were divided and Vaila and Foula became the property of Alv Knutsson. However, the Ciskes were Norwegian, and as Scotland had annexed Shetland a few decades before, there were confusing and conflicting claims of ownership. In the 17th century Martin Martin recorded an unusual folk tale: The inhabitants of the isle Vaila say that no cat will l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Linga, Vaila Sound
Linga is one of the Shetland Islands, near Vaila and Walls on Mainland, Shetland. Its highest elevation is 28 metres (91 ft). In 2014 and 2018 it was reported that the island was for sale for £250,000. Geography and geology Linga is made up of sandstone, subjected to ancient glacial erosion. Linga is to the north east of the island of Vaila, in Vaila Sound surrounded by Mainland, Shetland on three sides. The Holm of Breibister is to the west, the Baa of Linga to the south (''baa'' is a Shetland word for a sunken rock) and the village of Walls is in the North, on the mainland. The surface area is about 65 acres (20 hectares) and there are two derelict cottages on Linga. The local council granted planning permission in 2011 to an oil industry engineer develop the island but by 2018 these plans had not come to fruition. History In 2018 it was reported that nobody had lived on Linga since 1934. There were two inhabitants in 1931, 13 in 1881 and nine in 1841.Wilson, Rev. Jo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shetland Islands
Shetland, also called the Shetland Islands and formerly Zetland, is a subarctic archipelago in Scotland lying between Orkney, the Faroe Islands and Norway. It is the northernmost region of the United Kingdom. The islands lie about to the northeast of Orkney, from mainland Scotland and west of Norway. They form part of the border between the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the North Sea to the east. Their total area is ,Shetland Islands Council (2012) p. 4 and the population totalled 22,920 in 2019. The islands comprise the Shetland constituency of the Scottish Parliament. The local authority, the Shetland Islands Council, is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. The islands' administrative centre and only burgh is Lerwick, which has been the capital of Shetland since 1708, before which time the capital was Scalloway. The archipelago has an oceanic climate, complex geology, rugged coastline, and many low, rolling hills. The largest island, known as " the Mainland", ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sandness
Sandness (the "d" is not pronounced locally) is a headland and district in the west of Shetland Mainland, Scotland. Sandness was a civil parish, which also included the island of Papa Stour some 1600 metres northwest across ''Papa Sound''. In 1891, it was combined with Walls to the south, to form Walls and Sandness Parish, which had an administrative function until the abolition of Civil parishes in Scotland by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1929, and had been a statistical regional unit since. Currently, the community council area of Sandness and Walls covers about the same area. The 1878 map of Sandness Parish shows that the parish to the east was Aithsting, before it was included into Sandsting to the south. The headland flanks the south side of Papa Sound near Papa Stour leading into St Magnus Bay and the district includes the headland and forms the mainland part of Walls parish. The land itself is fairly fertile for Shetland and runs from Bousta to Huxter, with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
